The present invention relates to masonry tombstones, and in particular, a stone monument that both marks a grave and acts as a vault to hold urns of ashes or cremains.
Normally tombstones are solid stone with one or more faces polished and etched. Little else is done to the stone and they last for centuries without maintenance.
Urns holding ashes from cremations are frequently buried near the tombstone. Information on their location should be accurately logged on detailed and precise maps, but frequently the maps are wrong, lost, or not consulted when the plot must be opened again for relatives who die later, and then the urns may be disturbed or even broken.
Many cemeteries have nearly used all available space for burials of vaults and caskets, but have space with shallow bedrock or heavy tree root growth that are restricted to interring cremains which may be buried at any depth. Also, areas where the ground freezes, burials may only be done during warm months. In these areas, a monument as of the present invention is desirable to reduce the amount of digging required. If the base is set into the ground, one hole one time is necessary. If the base is set on top of the ground, no digging is necessary, and the plot could be on bedrock.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,726,052 issued to Thompson Apr. 10, 1973, discloses a cemetery monument base that holds urns, but it is made of stainless steel and concrete. As our crumbling highway bridges attest, stainless steel and concrete will not endure time as well as stone, as in the Roman aqueducts and Pharaoh's pyramids.
Drilling holes or cells in solid rock bases is difficult and frequently cracks or breaks the stone, and it is not known that such holes have ever been used for inferring cremains. Drilled cavities also can fill with water since access is from the top and any drilled drain hole may get plugged with soil clays or the actions of worms. The cells in the present invention, however are made with a standard stone saw normally used to cut out the block itself, and any water that enters and condenses can exit by the same bottom side path by which it may have entered.